


When it Rains

by ant5b



Category: Gargoyles (TV), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Pre-Gargoyles Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 05:31:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14970128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ant5b/pseuds/ant5b
Summary: Being Spider-Man came with its dangers, but also its fair share of perks. Peter just never expected one of them to be meeting and befriending a gargoyle.





	When it Rains

 

Back at Castle Wyvern, back when they were in Scotland and the world made just a little more sense, rain had been a curse. 

Rain made stone slick and perilous, especially for younglings still learning their wings. The castle bailey would become clogged with mud and filth so thick it clung to one’s feet like sopping clay, practically drowning the refugees that sought safety within their walls. The rookery would be at risk of flooding and, terrifyingly,  _ had  _ on more than one occasion. 

While rain might have been responsible for their harvest, it was a bad omen under most circumstances. 

But that was then. 

Now Castle Wyvern stood above the clouds, but it was no longer their home. The world had grown ever larger in their millennium of stone sleep, beyond their greatest imagining and greatest nightmare. Now they had electricity and motorcycles and television, and most importantly, Elisa. But they also had fear and loneliness and hatred, which were no less tangible. 

Brooklyn wasn’t sure under which category rain fell anymore. 

Manhattan was a kingdom of stone and iron and glass, and there was no mud to sully it. There was no rookery, and no younglings. 

Instead, the city’s filth become evident under the harsh buzz of streetlights, choking alleyways and corners and the humans living on them with rubbish. From above, rain made the city gleam and glisten like stars upon a black canvas. But given a closer look, rain just moved the filth from one place to another. 

 

It had been raining for a week now, a horror of the worst kind had they still lived in Wyvern of old. 

Elisa had complained of it the night before, with annoyance rather than the dread they had known. She’d said that rain caused more car accidents, especially in a bustling city like theirs. 

Brooklyn still didn’t know quite how to feel about calling Manhattan “his,” as heartening as it was to hear Elisa include them in its ownership. 

But Goliath immediately looked worried, and offered to follow her to ensure she made it home safely. 

Elisa laughed and she said she’d be fine, but wouldn’t mind the escort if he had the time. 

Every instance of Elisa’s warmth toward them made Brooklyn wonder why she seemed to be the exception to the rule when it came to humans. Why  _ she  _ had accepted them when no one else would. 

There had been no secrecy in old Wyvern, fewer humans, and he’d had his brothers and sisters at his side. Now they hid, and helped humans when they could, and were met with violence and fear at every turn. 

If Brooklyn’s will were weaker, if he had fallen like Demona had, he would have little trouble hating the humans. He would meet their violence with his own, would seek out the defenseless and innocent and ignorant and kill them simply because they were the same race as those that had massacred his clan. 

It would be so easy to hate them. That was why Brooklyn did everything in his power not to. Instead he was patient, if hardened. He kept hope alive, albeit quiet and tucked away, a carefully cultivated ember rather than the flame it had been when they had first awoken in this strange new world. He held out hope for humanity, and would help them when he heard their cries. 

With all the rain making him cagey and pensive, it just became a little harder to remember that. 

Rather than stay in the clocktower and avoid the rain altogether, as most of his clan had done, Brooklyn took up his brothers’ patrol shifts. He went out for long hours at a time, brooding on rooftops in between whaling on Manhattan’s criminal element. 

He sat huddled on a fire escape now, keenly scrutinizing the few passerby below, and wishing the rain would end. 

  
  


Peter had countless instances to be grateful of his new suit, though the new waterproof feature was really shaping up to be one of his favorites. 

One would think that on account of such foul weather, his patrols would be uneventful. But even before Toomes, when he would leave Happy dozens of weekly updates, his days were far from uneventful. He’d thought of all the little things he’d done to help people as boring, a waste of his talents when he felt he could be doing something so much greater. 

But with disillusionment came clarity, and Peter was once more putting his powers to good use. 

That evening alone he had helped salvage a couple’s belongings when their basement apartment flooded, reunited a lost girl with her frantic mother, and walked Sammy, the homeless man who camped out behind a closed laundromat, to the nearest shelter. 

There were also a few attempted muggings in the past week, most of them in side streets rather than Central Park on account of the rain. Though he hated seeing people in danger in any capacity, it at least narrowed his search radius and largely kept him out of the park, where web slinging wasn’t exactly a viable option. 

It was edging around midnight, and Peter stopped on the edge of a building to text May. She’d be asleep by now, but when his patrols went longer (per May’s ground rules when it wasn’t a school night and he didn’t have any outstanding assignments) she insisted on him sending her regular  updates so she’d know he was alright. 

He’d talked to her only two hours earlier, before she went to bed, but he didn’t mind the frequent texts. It was a small price to pay for being allowed to stay Spider-Man. Though it pained Peter to admit it, he would have gone behind May’s back if she’d forbidden it. Being Spider-Man meant so much more to him now, more than the flashy suit and his starry dreams of being an Avenger. He  _ was  _ Spider-Man, with or without the suit. Though the suit certainly made the job easier. 

He finished off his text to May (helped Gar the bodega guy put a tarp over his leaky roof. He let me have any snack I wanted. Got some gummy worms. Suit’s keeping me warm. Love you) before leaping off the roof, and swinging over to the next block. With the wind and rain he had to angle himself just right to avoid smacking into the side of buildings, but even when he overshot it, he had fun running sideways along widows before throwing himself back into open air. 

 

Peter was edging nearer to Manhattan when something triggered his spider-sense. 

He immediately stopped, dropping down onto a low rooftop. He scanned his surroundings, and in short order Karen's full analytical prowess came to bear. 

“Is something wrong, Peter?” she asked. 

“My spidey-sense is telling me something’s up,” he replied, “do you see anything?”

“Hm.” Karen was quiet for a few seconds. “I’m not detecting any immediate threats. Maybe there’s something on the street?”

Peter hurried to the roof’s edge where sure enough, in the alley between the building and the next, two men were encroaching on a woman in a long blue raincoat. 

However, despite the danger having presented itself, Peter’s spider-sense hadn’t abated. It remained tingling at the base of his skull, making his hair stand on end. Was there something about the two men he wasn’t seeing? Or maybe the woman?

Karen spoke up suddenly. “Peter, I’m detecting a heat signature on the fire escape in front of you.”

Peter turned to look, his vision temporarily hindered by the rain until Karen zoomed in and enhanced his night vision. What he saw had his heart leaping into his throat. 

Perched on the fire escape of the building before him was an almost demonic figure draped in shadow. In the haze of a distant streetlight he caught the flash of a red beak, long white hair and two sharp, jutting horns. And whatever it was, its attention had been seemingly arrested by the mugging-in-progress down below. 

“What’s in the bag, lady?” one of the men was asking, smiling with too much teeth. 

Icy terror raced up Peter’s spine as the men threatened the woman, afraid of what the monster would do if he were to suddenly swing down to help. It was sitting quietly for now, but what if he startled it into harming them? 

It turned out the Peter’s involvement wouldn’t be necessary for this, as the monster growled, a low reverberation that somehow cut through the gale. The shadows around it unfurled to reveal glossy black wings, and before Peter could even cry out it dove toward the three people below. 

Strangely enough, his spider-sense chose this moment to ease completely. 

But Peter had other things on his mind, and he leapt to the other building, readying to web the monster to the wall before he could hurt the woman. Though his mind was racing and he acted on instinct, he still hesitated when he saw the monster make a beeline for the two men, despite the woman being closer. 

In midair, the monster delivered a kick to one of the men’s chests that sent him sprawling. The man landed hard on his back on the sidewalk outside the alley. 

With a scream, the woman fell backward in the tumult, and scooted back to press herself against the wall. 

The men hardly had time to cry out before the monster was in motion again, even as the second man pulled out a gun. With the swipe of one taloned arm the gun went flying, and the monster spun around, swinging its long, thick tail around to knock the man’s feet out from under him. He landed in a puddle with a tremendous splash. 

“What the hell?” the first man groaned, pressing a hand against his chest. 

The monster’s wings fanned out wide behind it, and its roar was unlike anything Peter had ever heard. Snarling and feral, it reverberated through his skull and echoed through the alley.

The two men screamed, scrambling away, and the monster allowed them to flee down the street. Then it turned to the woman, who hadn’t moved from her terrified, curled up position. 

Peter tensed once more as the monster set its sights on her at last, muscles bunching as he prepared to leap to the woman’s defense. But again the monster surprised him. 

It lowered its wings and backed away, falling into a crouch. It raised its hands—deadly, clawed talons—but in the same way Peter did to show that he meant no harm, when he confronted those who were sick or scared or hurt. 

 And then the monster  _ spoke _ , its voice deep and almost human. 

“Are you alright, ma’am?” 

The woman’s eyes were impossibly wide, her face drained of color, and Peter recognized her naked shock and terror for what it was. She rose quickly, if shakily, to her feet and bolted out of the alley, gasping as she ran down the sidewalk in the opposite direction of the two men. 

The monster watched her go, silent once more.Though barely perceptible in the glow of the streetlight across the street, Peter saw it hunch its shoulders and lower its head, as if disappointed or hurt by the woman’s reaction. It stepped back into the shadows and rather than bothering with the fire escape again, simply leapt up into the air, burying its claws in the side of the building with the resounding crunch of stone. 

Peter remained absolutely still as he watched it— _ him? _ —scale the building beside him. He wondered over the origins of this creature, what he was doing in New York, why he was helping people. Peter no longer felt right calling it a monster, but was left with the dilemma of  _ what  _ to call it. 

“Karen,” Peter said, in as low a whisper as he could muster. “What  _ is  _ that?”

“I’ve been looking since you first spotted it, Peter,” she replied, “in the last few months there have been numerous unfounded reports of ‘flying creatures’ in Manhattan. My only other frame of reference are tenth century accounts which match a similar description. They describe the mythical creatures called ‘gargoyles’.”

Peter took a moment to process that, pretending that his brain wasn’t breaking at the idea of  _ gargoyles _ —real actual gargoyles, like Hunchback of Notre Dame—in New York City. What was he even supposed to  _ do  _ with that knowledge? Besides freak out over it with Ned later. 

The monster—the _ gargoyle _ —had already reached the opposite rooftop, and looked like it was preparing to leave. 

Fear of a different sort gripped Peter, and as he scaled the side of the building he frantically thought of ways to keep him from disappearing into the night because when would he have the opportunity to meet a  _ gargoyle  _ again? 

“Karen, what do I say, what do I say?” he hissed. 

_ Come here often?  _

No, bad Peter, no flirting with the deadly demonic monster. He could see MJ’s fingerprints all over  _ that  _ train of thought. 

_ I’m a big fan of your work, and definitely didn’t just learn what the hell you were five seconds ago.  _

Not a great approach either. 

“Just be yourself, Peter!” Karen said encouragingly, if unhelpfully. 

The gargoyle’s wings were spreading wide in preparation of flight, and desperation had Peter blurting out the first thing that popped into his head. 

_ Please be cool, for once in your life, just be cool.  _

“Uh, hi,” Peter said, his voice cracking. 

_ Why do I even bother. _

  
  


Elisa had told them not to judge too harshly the humans that ran from them after being saved. 

She explained that after the terror of their ordeal, their minds would remain in fight or flight, where anyone could be perceived as a threat. Brooklyn and his clan could be alarming on first glance, and a frightened human, even one who owed them their life, might run from them. 

Elisa advised they not take these instances too personally. Even as a police officer, she’d had victims do everything in their power to get away from her even when the danger was gone. She described one such occasion where a man had been held at gunpoint, and the moment he was free he had run, away from Elisa, and into oncoming traffic. She’d managed to yank him back in time, but her point remained that humans could be volatile and unpredictable when put in danger. 

Brooklyn understood all of this. He understood, but it didn’t make the expressions of fear, the screams, and the naked hate hurt any less. It didn’t make the kernel of bitterness in his gut any smaller. 

The woman in the blue raincoat ran away from him, and though it had been nearly a year of the same, Brooklyn still couldn’t fight the sting of rejection. 

He climbed back up the side of the building, intent on resuming his patrol despite the heaviness in his chest. He paused once he reached the top, the rain stinging his eyes. He noted that the wind had calmed. No longer the harsh gale it had been, and still more than enough for him to glide. 

Brooklyn prepared to jump, when he heard a voice from naught but ten feet away. 

“Uh, hi.”

Alarmed at being caught off guard, Brooklyn fell into a crouch with a growl, and spun around to face this new adversary. 

At first he saw nothing amiss, only empty rooftops. But then on the building across from him a slight figure lifted its head. Even from its place in shadow, Brooklyn could tell it was wearing a mask. The creature raised its hand with a small wave. 

“Hey, there,” it said, a little shaky. 

In one short leap Brooklyn had joined it on the adjacent rooftop, eyes glowing white and wings flared. 

“Who are you?” he demanded, and he got his first glimpse at the stranger as it backed away from him. 

He could only assume they were human, though the red and blue suit they wore covered them head to toe. They were crouching, as he was, and the large white eyes of their mask revealed little. 

“Um,” they— _ he,  _ perhaps—said, sounding young to Brooklyn’s ears. Younger than any human they had interacted with in some time. He cleared his throat before his voice could heighten in pitch once more. “I’m, uh, I’m Spider-Man.” 

Brooklyn blinked at that, some of his earlier aggression dwindling. “ _ You’re _ the Spider Man?” he said, before he could think better of it. 

The human’s white eyes flickered, as if they were blinking as well. “Yeah. You...you know about me?” 

Brooklyn resisted the urge to roll his eyes, though he did cross his arms over his chest. “Wifi isn’t that hard to come by.” 

He, Lexington, and Broadway had been following the Spider-Man’s exploits since they first figured out how to work a laptop. Even after their disastrous introduction to the Pack, their attention was still arrested by the superhero in the next borough over, even if they never sought him out as they had the Pack. Even Elisa thought well of him, which they’d learned was a rarity in the police force. 

Though Lexington would be disappointed to learn that the “Spider-Man” didn’t have six arms. And speaking of Lexington, this human was beginning to remind him a little too much of his rookery brother with his big eyes, slight build, and apparent  naiveté . Best to get back to the issue at hand. 

“What’re you doing here? Have you been following me?” Brooklyn asked, serious once more, but without the intensity of his earlier demands. 

The Spider-Man quickly raised his hands in front of his chest, and shook his head. “No, dude, I didn’t even know you existed before today! I was just passing by when I saw you save that lady.”

“You mean  _ scare  _ that lady,” Brooklyn couldn’t help but growl.

But in the face of his renewed ire the Spider-Man only shrugged, loose-limbed and casual, his earlier nervousness seemingly melting away before Brooklyn’s eyes. “I mean, you can be pretty scary to someone who’s already scared, y’know? It sucks, but I get why she ran off.”

It was a little disconcerting to hear Elisa’s very advice coming from the mouth of a stranger. Brooklyn ducked his head, scrutinizing the Spider-Man’s expressionless face. “Are  _ you  _ scared of me?”

He let out a breathless little laugh. “Oh, I was  _ super  _ scared of you. Giant monster-thing with wings sitting on a fire escape in Manhattan? I was losing my mind for a little bit.”

Brooklyn didn’t expect to find the human’s blunt honesty refreshing, but he did. So much so that he relaxed a little himself, draping his wings around his shoulders, as the Spider-Man continued speaking in that rapid, eager way of his. 

“But then I saw you fight those two dickheads and talk to the lady, and I thought—holy crap!”

Brooklyn stiffened almost immediately as the Spider-Man rocketed to his feet, anticipating an attack. But even with his face hidden, the Spider-Man managed to look contrite, rubbing the back of his neck. 

“Sorry, sorry, dude,” he said, “it’s just—your wings, I didn’t think they could do that. It just surprised me.”

The Spider-Man stepped away, falling back into a crouch. “I’m not the best at introductions,” he said, and Brooklyn could almost imagine his wince. 

“You and me both,” he replied wryly. 

The Spider-Man seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, and all at once Brooklyn felt overwhelmed by the human’s presence, his earnestness. 

Brooklyn walked over to the side of the roof facing the street, his wings unfurling and twitching antsily. He crouched on the edge. 

After hesitating for a moment the Spider-Man took a seat beside him, his legs dangling over the edge. 

Brooklyn watched the Spider-Man for a moment, unsure to what to make of him. In the videos on Youtube, he had seen the Spider-Man stop cars with his bare hands, string up thieves, and stop bank robberies, all single handedly. All of that seemed a far cry from the awkward, young human before him, swinging his legs back and forth in the empty air. 

Brooklyn blinked the rain out of his eyes as he turned away from the humans milling about below to look at the costumed human. 

“Why do you wear a mask?” he asked. 

The Spider-Man shrugged. “For the most part, it’s so bad guys don’t know what I look like.” He scratched the side of his head before hesitantly admitting, “I’ve got a kinda secret identity thing going on.”

Brooklyn smirked. “I thought that was only a thing in cartoons.”

The Spider-Man looked at him sharply, the eyes of his mask wide. Brooklyn tensed instinctively, at least until the human followed up with, “You watch cartoons?” sounding like it was a dream come true.  

“I think we’re getting off the subject,” Brooklyn said, a little harsher than he intended. The Spider-Man had done nothing but confound him at every turn, always doing the opposite of what he expected, and it put him a little on edge. 

“Right,” the Spider-Man said, ducking his head. “Just...a little excited. Meeting you’s probably one of the coolest thing that’s happened to me.”

Brooklyn actually laughed. “Well, that’s not something I hear every night.”

Despite the heavy rain, the city pulsed beneath them, undaunted as ever. Though the street below them was relatively quiet, the honking horns, the growls of a thousand different cars, and the occasional wail of a siren continued in the near-distance. 

The Spider-Man looked up at him. “So, uh...what now?”

Brooklyn’s wings flared of their own accord, bitter hope and the memory of betrayal roiling in his chest. 

“What do you mean?” he asked, cool and collected as he eyed the human. 

The Spider-Man shrugged, gesturing at him. “I mean, can we hang out again? Or would you rather I forget this ever happened and pretend there’s no such thing as gargoyles?”

Brooklyn looked at him straight on, incredulity lancing through him. “You’d do that?” 

The Spider-Man’s shoulders dropped slightly, but he nodded. “Yeah, man. I get why you’d want to stay a secret. I’m not exactly taking my mask off for every friendly face.”

But Brooklyn couldn’t quite believe it. Hope that had once come as easily as breathing had been tempered in the last year and the millenium before that. Betrayal followed them doggedly after the massacre at Castle Wyvern, and it seemed that for every ally they made, half a dozen enemies emerged. His clan had learned, painfully, that for every hand the humans extended, they hid a knife behind their back with the other. 

But the being reaching out now was an anomaly, and Brooklyn was left at a crossroads. 

His trepidation must have shown on his face, because the Spider-Man leaned forward, hands splayed before him. 

“I-I can get why you wouldn’t trust people. I can’t know what you’ve gone through—people can be pretty shitty, I know that much. But...but I’d like to be your friend, if uh...if you’ll let me.” 

“You kinda need trust for that,” Brooklyn said, but because his mind was far afield it lacked the heat he intended. 

This human continued to prove that he was different from the others they had encountered. He didn’t get too close, didn’t try to touch him. He didn’t ask questions, at least not pertinent ones, only taking what little Brooklyn told him. He didn’t even ask for his name. But most importantly, he gave Brooklyn an  _ out.  _ If he decided he never wanted to see the Spider-Man again, the human was willing to make it so. 

It was almost too good to be true. And there, at last, was the rub. 

Could it all be a carefully constructed trap to gain his trust? By going the path of more resistance, by offering Brooklyn an out, was someone hoping to lull him into a false sense of security? 

The cynic in him, made stronger each time their good faith was met with deception, told him to cut and run. But the believer, despite being hurt so many times, rallied at the idea of acceptance. 

At any rate, it would be dawn soon and Brooklyn still had a lot of ground to cover if he wanted to make it back to the clocktower that night. He’d have to come to some sort of decision. 

He stood up taller, his wings twitching as his thoughts unhelpfully ran in circles. 

The Spider-Man spoke again, the agitated edge that had so often claimed his voice fading so he sounded more self-assured. “Yeah, yeah you’re right. And, yeah, I do want you to trust me. But I know that trust goes both ways so…” 

He reached up and pulled off his mask. 

Brooklyn blinked at him, taking in the Spider-Man’s round, pale face and tousled brown hair. Though he was still learning the finer points of what distinguished humans from each other, this boy’s youth was obvious. 

The Spider-Man’s smile was as awkward as Brooklyn had imagined it would be as he extended a gloved hand in the gargoyle’s direction. 

“My name’s Peter,” he said. 

Before Brooklyn was aware of his unconscious choice, he had reached out and clasped Peter’s hand within his own larger one. 

“You’re younger than I expected,” Brooklyn replied, knowing how baffled he sounded. 

Peter released Brooklyn’s hand to throw both of his in the air. “Holy crap, how is that always the first thing I hear? Even from a  _ gargoyle _ !”

Brooklyn was startled into laughter once more, and even the rain couldn’t infringe on the lightness he felt in his chest. 

Peter was still grumbling as he tugged the mask back over his head, and in that moment Brooklyn made his decision. 

“Name’s Brooklyn, kid,” he said. 

“I’m  _ not  _ a—” Peter froze with the mask only half on his face. “Brooklyn?” he repeated. A smile began to brighten the exposed portion of his face. 

“Yeah,” Brooklyn replied with an eyeroll that was entirely too amused. He stood up for real, his wings extended in preparation of flight. “And I’ve gotta get going, Pete.”

“O-okay!” he said, “do you want to meet up again, or-or do you want my number? I don’t know if you have a phone but...”

Brooklyn hesitated, before reaching into the pouch tied to his belt. He pulled out the flip phone Elisa had bought for him, and Peter failed to stifle his laughter at the sight of it. 

“Hey, you try using touch screen with these things,” Brooklyn retorted defensively, if with a smile of his own, as he raised one taloned hand. 

Lexington was the only one Elisa trusted so far with one of the newer, fancier models, though Brooklyn felt confident that he was nearly there. He certainly wasn’t as bad as Goliath, or gods forbid, Hudson, who forgot his phone in his armchair half the time. 

“I didn’t say anything,” Peter replied, though his smirk didn’t fade. He took Brooklyn’s phone from him and typed on it briefly, before handing it back. 

“Thanks, Pete,” Brooklyn said, pocketing the phone once more. “But now I’ve really gotta go.”

“Fly home safe, Brooklyn,” Peter replied cheekily, tugging his mask on the rest of the way. “And, uh, your secret’s safe with me.”

Brooklyn smiled. “Same here.” 

He leapt off the roof, quickly catching an updraft that propelled up in the air and over the surrounding buildings. 

The entire way back to the clock tower, he barely paid the rain any thought. 


End file.
